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PASTICHES
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"Open Letter to Survivors" by Francis M.Nevins (EQMM, N°342, May 1972) starts off with a line from "Ten Days' Wonder" (Chapter 10) : "... There was the case of Adelina Monquieux, his remarkable solution of which cannot be revealed before 1972 by agreement with that curious lady's executors..." Nevins takes it from here in this 1972 story about a unnamed "big whodunit writer who's cleaned up umpteen cases fo the New York force" who came to Adelina Monquieux's home. Adelina's will stipulates that her three identical looking sons Xavier, Yves & Zachary will get half a million dollars plus the income from another half a million in a trust. Her niece Marie get a few hundred thousands. The remaining twenty millions will go to charity and of course Adelaline get murdered! The name of the sleuth is never mentioned but is obvious. Nils Hardin publisher and editor of the fanzine
"Xenophile" published a special Ellery Queen-edition in
June 1975. In it he tried his hand at a mystery story "The Ghana
Word Mystery" by L.Ray Quaine, sadly due to some printing
problem, aside from the title and two unreadable lines,
two blank pages appeared... |
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![]() Marty Pasko wrote the script for a 12 page Batman-comicstory called "A Clue Before Dying" (Detective Comics N°. 459 - May 1976) Batman tries to find the man who killed mystery writer Elliot Quinn, and who may be the same man who killed an architect in Quinn's home years ago.Not only an homage to Queen but in the story also "a" Lt. Dannay appeared! |
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Again we sidestep into the realm of popmusic. A little
more known than our previous examples is the 1977 Tavares hitsingle Whodunit
written by K.St.Louis and F.Perren: She went dancin' in the dark, somebody stole her heart Ellery Queen if you're so keen Won't you help me find my sweet thing (Yeah, yeah) |
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What would happen if
Maigret, Ellery Queen
and Hercule Poirot met in Tokyo?
Their rich host certainly seems to know. Solely for his
pleasure to see his favorite detectives at work. One other old Japanese
detective is present: Kogoro Akechi, the hero in
the books of Edogawa Rampo. When researching his 1981 'The Great Detectives' the late Julian Symons not only had the privilige of meeting Fred in Larchmont. He was able to put forward an interesting theory that there were in fact two Ellery's -- the earlier one with the pince-nez and the later one post "Halfway House" He even constructed a theory that the earlier Ellery was, in fact, Ellery's younger brother "Dan". Fred thought the theory was 'inventive' but stated that Julian underestimated the way people change and even went as far as saying the theory was unconvincing. Julian included a pastiche 'Dan and the Fair Sabrina' a story about a missing statuette called 'Sabrina'.
Truly a pity that some of these stories are unobtainable... Jon Breen describes 'The Persian Fez Mystery or "The Tragedy of Q" by Joe R. Christopher (1983) as "one of the cleverest send-ups of the Queen style. Found in 30 copy(!) chapbook "Queen's Books Investigated" or "Queen is in the Accounting House" it reveals that Elroy Queep "..only in his novels solved the cases before the police, in real life his suggestions were always wrong..." The 70th anniversary edition of EQMM had two pastiches . Edward D.Hoch's "The Circle of Ink"(EQMM, September 1999) placed Ellery and his married father (Jesse Sherwood) in a University and Jon L.Breen's "The Gilbert and Sullivan Clue" lets Ellery deal with Y2K. Edward Hoch even got Ellery to revisit Wrightsville in "The Wrightsville Carnival" (EQMM September/October 2005). Whilst in the same issue Josh Pachter and Jon.L.Breen wrote "The German Cologne Mystery" subtitled an Ellery Queen parody it had Inspector Wretched Breen brake down the unlocked door of the fast-declining Hotel Madrid's room 521. In response to a phone call from his son, celebrated mystery writer and accomplished amateur detective Celery Breen.
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